Joint UCU and ATL response to the closure of MFL Provision

1.	The Joint Unions refute the College’s proposal to close the provision of Modern Foreign Languages, and suggest that insufficient evidence has been presented to support this decision.
2.	The College has taken no steps to embed MFL’s within its existing courses, e.g., Travel and Tourism, Business and ICT,  and therefore reduce the risk of redundancies; the Unions would ask for clear assurance that the College has given real consideration to these options and we would draw the College’s attention to the DfES National Language Strategy (2002” that states: “There must be more diverse language provision in FE, HE and work-based learning, including the opportunity to study units alongside courses in other subjects”. 
3.	The College has stated “business reasons” for the closure of MFL; this suggests that the College is in fact a profit-making organisation, in which case why has there been no targeted marketing undertaken for MFL?  
3.1	The College has provided no satisfactory evidence of any steps undertaken to arrest the slide in enrolment numbers.
4.	The Unions strongly argue that the College’s use of the term “re-organisation” is self-serving and misleading; this is not a re-organisation, it is a cessation of provision; 
4.1	 With respect to this the College has declared these posts to be redundant; these posts, and indeed the sector, will cease to exist, therefore this is a redundancy situation, and the Unions maintain that Voluntary Redundancy should be offered to all affected staff.
5.	The College has stated that the academy is “currently self-assessing” at a grade 4; this does not reflect the higher assessments provided by Ofsted, and the Unions challenge this assertion and ask that all previous external assessments for the timescale stated from 2000 to 2006 are provided to the Unions.   Also, that it is acknowledged that no member of the language team received lower than a Grade 3 in the last observation period.
6.	What has the College done to improve the MFL provision, if it assumes that the standard of teaching has in fact declined?  The Unions request full disclosure of any steps taken to address this issue.
7.	There is no evidence of any impact assessment being undertaken by the College in advance of this notification; the Unions request that details of any and all such assessments are made available immediately and include the following information:
•	Impact assessment by age, race, gender and disability;
•	Who undertook these assessments;
•	When the assessments were undertaken.
8.	This is not a genuine consultation opportunity; the College continues to discontinue classes and effectively negate any opportunity for MFL to continue next year, therefore no meaningful consultation can take place and the College has in fact already made their decision to close this provision.
9.	The College has stated an untenable time frame for any proposed “consultation” and is undertaking individual interviews with affected staff without being in receipt of all pertinent information.
10.	Why has the College not clarified how many agency staff are currently employed within EFL, and therefore how many hours/positions are likely to be available?
11.	We would like clarification on the status of CRC badged courses run by Impington and Swavesey, and what redeployment opportunities there are in this context.
12.	We would seek acknowledgement of the excellent exam results achieved by this sector, and the enthusiastic feedback from students.